


Duet

by queenmab_scherzo



Series: Symphony of a Thousand [1]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Awkward Flirting, Eventual Smut, M/M, Warning: Music Jargon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:41:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab_scherzo/pseuds/queenmab_scherzo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>World-renowned cello soloist Richard Armitage is on tour with his professional string quartet. They visit the campus where Lee Pace serves as piano faculty. During their rehearsal for Richard's solo recital, things get a little heated.</p><p>Fill for the Hobbit RPF Holiday Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orangerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orangerie/gifts).



> Inspired by the wonderful prompt by Orangerie, where she specifically referenced Brahms' Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38 and this quote about the piece: "[the piano] should be a partner - often a leading, often a watchful and considerate partner - but it should under no circumstances assume a purely accompanying role.” 

Lee sat back from the keyboard and groaned, scowling at the passage of eighth notes currently giving him fits. Of all the semesters for the London Symphony String Quartet to visit campus, he could at least be grateful that they chose one with a light teaching load. Fifteen hours of lessons a week were reasonable, plus duties as an advisor and faculty accompanist. At least he didn't have to spend any time at the front of a classroom. He took a deep breath, ready to dive into yet another repetition, when a soft knock from outside sent his stomach fluttering.

He pulled on the doorknob and found himself face-to-face with a fiberglass cello case, maroon, taking up most of his doorway. Lee blinked and caught two voices. One, he recognized as a teaching assistant in the cello studio, though she was speaking higher and faster than usual. The other voice he felt as much as heard; a deep, rocky sound that danced in the mid-reaches of the bass clef. Lee gripped the doorknob more tightly and swallowed hard.

The voices said good-byes, and the cello case spun around to reveal the face Lee had memorized from posters plastered around the music department. Richard Armitage. His name was well-known even outside the cello community, and his face—Lee smiled, a huff of air escaping his lips, almost a laugh of surprise.

The posters really didn't do him justice. Of course they couldn't, because the photo was black and white; in life, just as in print, his hair was dark and luscious and rakishly disheveled, but his eyes—they were a shock of something between gray and blue, offset by a perfect frame of dark lashes. Lee couldn't have possibly been prepared.

Armitage smiled, and his eyes flitted away as soon as they made contact with Lee's.

He caught his breath, maybe a few seconds too late, and stammered, "Do you—come in! Sorry, come on in. Mr. Armitage, right?"

"Oh, goodness, Richard is fine," he chuckled, a chocolate sound from the warm part of his chest. He stuck out a hand and Lee shook it rather hopelessly.

"I'm Lee. Come in, really, make yourself at home!"

Richard strode past into the spacious studio, taking in the decor—rusty winter colors interspersed with their bright purple school logo. A small, overstuffed couch hugged one wall, and a desk which served more as storage for stacks of music than anything else stood inside the door. Lee had spread a forest green rug across the floor to cover up the drab, colorless carpet.

The centerpiece of the room, of course, was the grand piano, angled across the rug so the player had a view of both windows and a few tall bookcases packed with sheet music, records, CDs, speakers, and books on history and pedagogy.

"It's gorgeous," Richard said softly, taking the room in as if everything went beyond his wildest dreams. Lee laughed nervously; he was still stuck at the part where Richard Armitage was _in his office._

"And what a view!" Richard gushed. He set his instrument down gently and crossed to one of the windows, which looked out over the reedy corner of a lake which Lee had always found rather brown and disappointing.

Richard turned around again, beaming this smile that could light a candle, and something about that, his grin and his laugh and his messy black hair and the way one sleeve of his cardigan kept slipping past his elbow, it all made Lee feel simultaneously more comfortable and more nervous. Richard was just so _genuine_ —but God, he was one of the best musicians alive, and here Lee was, a professor and a faculty accompanist with an office that overlooked the dingy parts of Lake Michigan. He suddenly thought he would much rather sit down together for a cup of coffee than for an hour of Brahms.

He cleared his throat and answered, "yes, yeah … we're lucky, really. Especially on this side of the building."

Richard agreed emphatically. He lifted his case onto the couch and began the process of unloading and preparing his cello, all the while talking animatedly about the architecture and views he'd seen and visited so far on campus. The way he talked with such enthusiasm and admiration, one would never have guessed he was from London, and had probably traveled to all manner of stunning locations around the world.

Gently, but without flourish, Richard lifted his cello from its case, and Lee's breath hitched around his sternum. For all Richard's striking good looks, that cello was like his exquisite female counterpart.

It didn't look real. The rich crimson wood and creamy knots were shaped in an elegant and antique pattern, looking fragile and untouchable as if one human finger could taint its very sound. He swallowed dryly and wondered what protocol was in the string world—if it would be too forward or too presumptuous to ask what kind of instrument Richard played.

He did, though. He asked. And Richard said a long, unintelligible Italian name that Lee would forget almost instantly. What stuck in his mind was the way Richard's tongue wrapped around a subtle Italian accent, effortless and dark. "It's on loan from the orchestra," Richard added, a humble afterthought, but Lee was having trouble hearing over his raging heartbeat.

Lee nodded, but Richard's back was turned as he bent over his case, fiddling with his endpin and bow and rosin and a soft cloth, and Lee gazed on, following the process without actually understanding much. He slid onto his piano bench, waiting politely and appreciating the view.

When Richard turned back around, slow and deliberate, Lee snapped back to attention. "Please, pull up a seat, anything you like," he said, waving a hand at his mismatched handful of wooden chairs in the corner. "And did—oh, sorry—do you want a stand? I just assumed—but I shouldn't, of course—"

"Oh, no, it's no problem at all," Richard said with that maddening almost-smile curving his lips. He dropped his music on the floor as if it meant nothing and Lee winced. But Richard settled into his seat, adjusting his cello between his legs, then looked up and angled one perfect black eyebrow and offered Lee a full smile and said, "I think I've got all the fingerings down, by now," and Lee might have imagined the wink that went along with it but at any rate the only thing that saved him from fainting straight away was his ludicrous bark of laughter at Richard's terrible joke. In fact it was embarrassingly loud, but Richard laughed, too, and it provided the right distraction so Lee could regain feeling in all his limbs.

They agreed on a tuning note, and Lee played a couple octaves, fingertips shaking over the keys just enough for him to notice. Richard, however, was focused on his own instrument. It was fascinating—and ludicrous, because Lee had seen string players tune thousands of times, but Richard was so intent and so _mesmerizing_ , and the process so brief and natural—a fluent exchange of perfect octaves and fifths between strings.

Lee tore his eyes away and stared for an unseeing moment at the ceiling.

That morning, he'd spoken to the other staff accompanist. She'd already rehearsed with one of the quartet's violinists, _Something Evans_ , and she'd said all he'd wanted was to take everything faster. But he was cute—she mentioned that in passing—and Lee had asked if he was single and he'd only been joking, especially knowing she'd had her eyes on this operatic tenor for some time. Now he wondered how unprofessional it would actually be, or how stupid, for that matter, to become attached to a cello soloist based half-way across the world.

He abruptly derailed that train of thought and looked back over at Richard, who was tweaking pegs and inspecting the end of his bow with long, lithe fingers.

"So," Lee said loudly, for his own benefit, "what would you like to start with? Brahms or Beethoven?"

Richard looked up thoughtfully, tapping his bow against his shoulder. "Ah, you don't want to listen to me practice the Bach?"

Lee blinked. For a moment, he felt ridiculous and small and confused and out of his league already, when they hadn't even played a single note. Then Richard chuckled and shook his head and apologized with a goofy smile and Lee laughed, too, and he felt his shoulders unwind.

They giggled for a few moments (and Lee was ashamed to even think the word _giggled,_ but he did feel pretty foolish), and Richard offered a _sorry, that was terrible_ , and Lee cut him off there, because no, it's fine, of course.

"[Brahms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJpJKFmCKF4)," Richard said after a deep breath, and Lee had to regain his bearings before he even remembered what they were talking about. "The Beethoven won't take more than a run-through, honestly. It's just a matter of me tuning those bloody intervals and then not bringing you down in the finale." He shot Lee a sheepish, lopsided grin.

"…Bringing _me_ down?" Lee stammered, addressing his hands. "No, no, not at all, you wouldn't—" he laughed nervously, "I just hope—well, I mean, it will be great. I mean, _you_ _'_ _ll_ be great." He cleared his throat. "…Brahms it is." He opened his mouth and looked up again, not really sure what else he should say, but Richard wasn't looking at him. His head was bowed, and he tapped an idle rhythm on one knee while fingering up and down the neck of his cello, a portrait of the brooding artist. Lee stared, the air gone from his lungs, transfixed.

Lee lost track of the seconds—minutes?—before Richard's eyes flicked up and he tilted his head just slightly, a smile stretching his lips. Lee started and his jaw snapped shut with a click that made him wince and blush.

"Sorry?" Richard offered. "Oh, did you say something?"

"No, no—I—that is, I was wondering…. For just an hour recital," Lee said, opening the piano score and pressing it flat, "are we going to do the repeat?"

For a moment, Richard didn't answer. Lee felt his stomach twist because _God, don_ _'_ _t ask stupid questions, now you_ _'_ _ve offended him_ , and he looked up from his pages, one eyebrow raised, lips already forming an apology.

His _sorrys_ died on his tongue. Richard looked small and sheepish. He rubbed the back of his neck, a gentle pink brushing high on his cheeks as he addressed his cello. "Yes, all repeats. I'm ... a bit of a purist, I'm afraid. Especially when it comes to Brahms." He glanced up, just for a breath of a second, and they didn't even make eye contact but Lee felt a tug in his throat. Richard fucking Armitage was standing here with his multi-million dollar cello, toeing the rug in _Lee_ _'_ _s studio_ and blushing over musical interpretation. He hadn't been this starstruck since turning pages for Thibaudet at Symphony Center over a year ago.

He took a deep breath. "Yeah, of course. Sorry, that's fine- _obviously_ it's fine, it's up to you, I just-yeah, all repeats. Got it."

"And—sorry to ask, this is a little weird," Richard chuckled and looked down while he wrapped his ankle around a leg of his chair. Lee held his breath. "Instead of running through first, can we just do a couple spots? You know, it's just—once I get into focus for a run-through, I can't pay much attention and it's—that is, you deserve better than that."

"I don't—" Lee choked on his words. He looked down at his hands and cracked half his knuckles, a habit he'd kicked the day he began training as a concert pianist. "That's perfect," he said, taking a deep breath. "Did you have any spots in mind?"

Richard leaned over and flipped open one of his parts. The sheet music was yellowed and chewed at the edges by time and overuse. The pencil marks between all the lines and margins were so heavy Lee could see them from ten feet away.

"This dialogue at fifty-four is just brilliant," Richard breathed. There was a subtle curve to his lips that could be called a smile, a hint of a smile. He looked up at Lee through his lashes as his left hand idly spelled out chords on the fingerboard. "I'm going to play off of that, so don't hold back. Can we start there?"

Lee nodded, feeling stiff and _hopeless_.

The first notes he played with Richard were astounding, shaky, and ill-timed. For at least two phrases, he felt like he was hanging onto each line one at a time, as if every single note came as a surprise, despite practicing this part for the last three months. And Richard—well, the way that cello filled the room, the way that sound was a presence all its own—it distracted Lee at first, but then he settled into the solid security of Brahms, and his fingers found their rhythm again.

Lee washed himself over with the music, keeping one eye on Richard for any signs of concern. The cellist played without hardly trying. His eyes are trained down, a crease twisting between his thick eyebrows. His lips moved, almost imperceptibly, as if he were singing along to a song without words, ghosting over a melody or perhaps muttering a critique to himself under his breath.

"There, there it is," Richard said aloud, and Lee almost jumped out of his seat.

"Want me to, um—"

"Play out, there! Go ahead, all you can give me!"

"Oh, sure, I just-I mean, I didn't want to cover you up, or anything, so I was-"

"No, no!" Richard cut him off. "No, cover me up all you like!" Lee felt his face turn scarlet at the edges but Richard didn't seem to notice, adding, "you're absolutely the lead voice, there."

Lee blinked and glanced at his music. He felt unsure, but at the same time, he wasn't about to correct Richard bloody Armitage. He reached for a pencil, then hesitated. "I mean, I'm marked _pianissimo_ there in the score, and you're in such a low register ..." he tried one last time, leaving the question open-ended.

Richard nodded fervently. "Oh, yes, of course, but when I'm down below bass clef, [the C-string is really meant to be _felt_ , here, more than _heard_](http://youtu.be/TJpJKFmCKF4?t=2m38s)."

Lee's mouth fell open as he felt all the blood rush from his head.

"You know what I mean?" Richard said, oblivious. "Let's go back a couple bars. Don't listen, so much as-just see if you can _feel_ my pacing."

The breath spilled from his lungs and all Lee could manage was an embarrassing rasp. He dashed a quick note into his music and leaned over the keyboard. "From, uh," he cleared his throat, "measure sixty-nine?" _Of course._ He tried to swallow down the flush burning his cheeks. "I'll give you the eighth pick-up."

Lee had a hard time doing as Richard asked. It's not that he disagreed on a musical or philosophical level, or anything. Lee tried to bring up the piano, to achieve the perfect balance, but the cello part transfixed him. Richard was stunning—he coaxed those low notes from the throat of the cello like it was his own voice, that craggy register that you could only cross with deep emotion—rage, panic, joy, passion.

Richard stopped playing after too long, a full-fledged smile plastered across his cheeks.

Lee shook his head vigorously and tried to focus when he realized Richard was speaking again.

"…to run through it all?"

Lee racked his mind. "Yeah—do a run through? Do you want to run it through?"

Richard chuckled. "That's what I'm asking you, love." He leaned over and closed his copy of the music. "One more thing—I think the real _guts_ are in the [triplets in this section](http://youtu.be/TJpJKFmCKF4?t=8m7s). The motion of that counter-melody lends it this turbulence, this sense of urgency deep down to the heart ... the melody can't breath without that." Then his face softened into a smile. "Give me some air, darling."

Lee's eyebrows seemed to move all on their own. He licked his lips and smirked. Because Christ, his heart hadn't beat this hard since he'd first heard Beethoven's Ninth live, and if a person doesn't act on emotions that strong, he's missing the point of music and life all in one wave of overwhelming apathy.

"Anything else I can give you?" Lee asked, keeping his voice steady for good measure.

Richard blinked and his eyes made an obvious sweep from Lee's eyes down to his toes and back. Lee's stomach flipped.

"Why don't we finish out?" Richard said, and Lee shouldn't have noticed—maybe it was his imagination, anyway—but Richard's voice must have jumped almost an octave. "I'll let you know after the finale."

"From the beginning?"

"Yes."

Lee shifted on his stool, fitting his fingers between the black keys and then giving them a good stretch. He looked up and they made eye-contact, searing Lee down to his nerve-endings. They both nodded. In tandem, they brushed the soft strokes of the introduction across the low, golden sunlight dipping through the windows.

At the end of the exposition, Lee began to forget there was any space between them. He didn't so much press the keys as pull the sound from them; a subdued dynamic; a soloistic piano; a gentle murmur against an ear in the back row. It grew, the crescendo starting as just a kernel of heat in his gut, then tossing a spark between him and Richard, lighting up and kindling a perfect leap of intervals. The cello swung into the full rages of the melody and the piano tumbled after, always chasing Richard's octave, their voices no more than a breath apart in splendid misalignment, just at each other's fingertips so that the conflict was sublime.

And there it was-the bottomless tremor of the cello's lowest string. Lee could feel the floor fall away into the undulation of an untouchable E minor, leaving him to hang below the bass clef, and all that kept him tethered in place were open fifths in the left hand. They were steady but ethereal; offset by just a beat, they tailed after the cello, always reaching short, grasping at the empty ledger lines between them until Richard leapt into the cloudy peaks of tenor clef and left the piano to lose footing and crumble to the bottom of its bass. Lee felt the last gasps of B minor rattle in his lungs, falling against the cello line. Every one of his senses tingled with Richard's breath and with the sigh of his downbow as they rejoined, their voices crossed again, somehow toppling together and wrapping up as one in a chromatic mediant.

How he made it through two more movements, Lee would never know. He fought down the uncomfortable shift in his blood pressure, but nothing did him any favors—Richard's gorgeous phrasing, Brahms' provocative harmonies, their frequent eye contact at transitions which grew noticeably longer and more intense with each section.

Lee was wrapped up in the weight of everything until the performance became second nature. The notes were engraved on his bones and all he had to do was open up his skin and share all his chords and themes with the air, exposing them there where Richard could pull them up into his own, across the bridge and between his strings.

When they finally resurfaced, when the sound curled like smoke and dissipated on the air, when all that was left was its taste on the tongue and adrenaline molten in his veins, Lee lifted his fingers from the keyboard and blinked several times to regain his bearings. He looked up at Richard and had to swallow down a whimper.

The cellist was bent low over his fingerboard, brow furrowed and lips just parted in an expression somewhere between passion and agony.

"God, I love Brahms," Lee muttered.

"Yeah," Richard croaked, then cleared his throat. Something sparkled behind his eyes and he sat up on the edge of his chair. "Yeah, yes, so do I! His music is ... it's so _endless_."

Lee raised his eyebrows.

Richard stood up suddenly, and laid his cello carefully across the rug. "Here," he stepped forward, "Let me show you my favorite part—the last pianist I played this with botched it beyond repair."

"That's a shame," Lee whispered, his throat drying up as Richard leaned into his personal space and flipped a few pages of the piano part. He wrapped one hand around Lee's collar bone and he wouldn't have been surprised if it burned right through his button-down.

"There," Richard breathed. "This exquisite melody, [when it comes back at _forte_ , offset by a measure](http://youtu.be/TJpJKFmCKF4?t=8m50s)—I can't get enough of you, there." His voice brushed against Lee's ear and sent a shiver down his spine. "It truly stirs something inside you," Richard went on, bending closer, his hands lingering over the page and his breath lingering at the back of Lee's neck. "It fills you up with this burning passion. Like everything and everyone you've ever felt is going to overflow in your chest."

Lee nodded, his mouth dry. "There's so _much_ ," he said. "It's so heavy. But it's always worth it, in the end," he said, and all he could feel was intense pressure hanging between them on the still, silent air—the unstable, torn feeling of a minor second pulsing in his ears.

His gaze flicked up and his pulse stuttered. Richard's eyes bored into his, just centimeters away, flickering behind his dark lashes and blurring around the edges, they were so close. No metaphor for blue could do them justice.

Lee looked down and stared hard at Richard's lips. "You remember what you said about _feeling_ it, instead of hearing it?" Lee whispered, his words a brushstroke against Richard's exhale. The slightest nod. "I think I still feel it. I can't shake it out of me."

Richard murmured with assent, complete and knowing, as if they had read from the same book.

"You never told me what else I could give you," Lee said.

"I think the real question is," Richard whispered, his eyes dark and all-encompassing, "what can I give you?"

"You're the soloist. I'm just here to accompany."

"No, not at all-this is an equal partnership, darling."

It all happened perfectly, seamlessly, the soft kiss hardening between them and buttons coming undone, all in a winding phrase, balanced, but skewed by surprise harmonies in all the right moments. For a giddy second Lee was grateful he didn't play a wind instrument; he suffocated in the deep minor modes of Richard's ribcage, hollowing himself out and drinking in the modulation.

He felt his back hit the rug and saw cello strings out of the corner of his eye, doubled in the blurry edges of his vision.

He felt Richard spell chords across his hipbones.

He felt the motes of E minor in the waning light and the subdominant shift in the warm skin under his hands.

He felt this intangible thrum behind his navel, this dissonance trying to escape his throat, always shifting and inverting and pulling him toward resolution. He was heady with it, the sudden cross-relation and the subtle shift in harmony, just one pitch raised, one note stretched so that the whole phrase fell off-kilter until there was no upbeat or downbeat, just the inexorable cascade of keys that vibrated in the bottom of his lungs, unexpected and unavoidable; perfect in a way that broke against his sternum, and yet could never have happened any other way.

It was all too much and pulled his strings tight enough to sharpen his senses just short of snapping. His fingers twitched and scrabbled against nothing because that's what they did, they spelled things out for him; they bound his mind and his body to the earth; but there was nothing there to grab onto for any control, so he released everything—the air in his lungs, his grip on reality—and he rode the edge of that high harmonic and let the dominant pedal pulsate at the base of his spine, careening toward a cadence until they could finally meet in the middle, their bodies flush, a suspended seventh howling in his veins before crashing back to the mediant—one astounding consonance—a sturdy, sinless tonic foundation.

He came back down from that long final note gasping on nothing, weightless and burning but pressed down flat into the floor by Richard's endless hard muscle and the threads of authentic cadence. They rocked together for a few moments still, oversensitive and satisfied and never finished.

Lee inhaled the faint scents of sweat and wool and rosin and breathed out again.

He kissed Richard then, warm and pliant, unleaden by harsh dissonance, and couldn't help but think that this is the feeling he'd been chasing all his life; the way it's supposed to feel when you play Brahms—when you _really_ play Brahms, all the shifts in texture and tempo and all the subtle nuances that speak to the inside and outside of human nature. This unending desire, this unique longing.

Brahms sounds out this effervescent push and pull against time, so that it's offset just enough to leave you wanting, no matter what. To give you too much and still make you want more.

Lee sucked in a shuddering breath and ran a fingertip over a dark bruise he'd bitten into Richard's shoulder. "Sorry about that," he whispered.

Richard hummed. "Don't be. I'm wearing three pieces for the recital, anyway."

"Keep it safe," Lee agreed.

"We're the only ones who will know it's there," Richard murmured, blanketing Lee with his overheated body and sighing into another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to tease, but yeah, there's a whole AU in the making.
> 
> You can find other works for the Hobbit RPF Holiday Exchange at hobbitrpfxchange.tumblr.com


End file.
